


Hogwarts' Hallways

by insertcleveracejoke



Series: Hogwarts' Hallways [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Failed Experiment of Rowena Ravenclaw, Gen, Helga Hufflepuff is a Badass, Hogwarts was meant to be safe, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Salazar is terribly fond of his monster, Sentient Hogwarts, She will raise Harry right, The Founders are still alive, eventually, everything is alright though, kind of at least, the basilisk was meant to protect the school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 13:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15607200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insertcleveracejoke/pseuds/insertcleveracejoke
Summary: Tom Riddle found the Chamber of Secrets and that was the first of his mistakes.A young boy would, fifty years later,  find it as well in any world. But in this one, let's give him a headstart. Let's give him the time he never had. Let's say he finds it almost in the start of the second year, not at its end, when Hermione was still brewing Polyjuice that would soon become useless.Let's say that, under the stress of the false accusation of being the Heir of Slytherin, Harry went there alone one day to check on the potion, and he said the password by accident. Let's say Harry Potter finds the passage by himself before it is almost too late.Hogwarts was meant to be safe. It was meant to be a safe place to all of its students. An irresponsible Headmaster might have changed it in Harry's first year, an arrogant future dark lord might have walked in these hallways and gathered followers, but Hogwarts was meant to be safe. Riddle used it against the students and the very magic of the school rebelled.





	Hogwarts' Hallways

There are secrets in Hogwarts that are deeper than the Chamber of Secrets, better hidden than the Room of Requirement. Tom Riddle called this place his home. It might have begrudgingly accepted his steps on the ground, his hands on the walls, his ill-intended whispers in those hallways — but it never opened up to him as he liked to think it did.

Hermione, the brightest witch of her age, didn't know about the house elves in the school until her fourth year. Tom Riddle didn't find all the secrets in Hogwarts. The very stones of the castle, tied to older and stronger magic than even he understood, he who could never understand love or the need to protect others, kept him away from its most precious secret. The hallways never lead them to it. The ground under his feet never changed. The walls closed around passages when he wasn't looking.

He found the Chamber of Secrets and that was the first of his mistakes. 

A young boy would, fifty years later, find it as well in any world. But in this one, let's give him a headstart. Let's give him the time he never had. Let's say he finds it almost in the start of the second year, not at its end, when Hermione was still brewing Polyjuice that would soon become useless. 

Let's say that, under the stress of the false accusation of being the Heir of Slytherin, Harry went there alone one day to check on the potion, and he said the password by accident. Let's say Harry Potter finds the passage by himself before it is almost too late.

Hogwarts was meant to be safe. It was meant to be a safe place to all of its students. An irresponsible Headmaster might have changed it in Harry's first year, an arrogant future dark lord might have walked in these hallways and gathered followers, but Hogwarts was meant to be safe. Riddle used it against the students and the very magic of the school rebelled.

Foolish boy, it said, even though Voldemort had never bothered to listen. You think you know everything about this place? Thousands of students came through this door and left unscathed under my protection, more brilliants minds have tried to understand my potential, stronger wands have tried to destroy my foundations. Many have called me home. You were not the only. Beware.

Beware, for I am no longer going to tolerate you.

You hurt one of my students once and it was an affront; twice you tried now and you were stopped from commiting this crime again. You called me home. You are homeless now.

Harry went down the slide. He did not yet know what was the monster inside but he saw its shed skin and knew he could try to talk to it. Harry had never hurt Hogwarts' students, was a student himself, and so the awake magic of the school protected him, whispered close your eyes to the basilisk, and it was used to obeying whispers so it did.

Tom Riddle's grip on Ginny was new and frail, and so his grip on the basilisk was maybe not new, but frail as well. Harry talked to the monster, and it listened to him. 

"Why are you hurting students?", Harry asked, and the basilisk, used to obey, answered.

"I'm hungry, and the Heir ordered me to."

"Who is the Heir?"

The basilisk wasn't happy. It was put in the school as a last defense against invaders, had been raise by Salazar Slytherin as a shield, as a weapon, as a ward, and it did not like that Tom Riddle had used it against the very students it was made to protect. The monster was hungry and lonely after so many years and it had finally found a chance to protect the school again.

Harry asked again and the basilisk, used to obey, answered.

There was no Fawkes, so the monster let him ride its head and took him back to the bathroom. Harry thanked it (the basilisk hadn't been thanked in many, many years) and almost forgot to close the passage before running to his friends.

Ron had a lifetime of knowing Ginny. The news of her possession almost made him panic, but he was the one who brought the diary to Harry when she wasn't looking, pale and weak that she was at that point. Harry told them to stay back. They didn't, but the basilisk close its eyes for them too at his request, and it was glad to chew the dark magic of the diary away.

They told Dumbledore, then, and the old wizard was impressed, but in this world as well as in others he knew there was something more to this than just a diary, and in this world as well he didn't tell them.

He was not, though, the most important person that noticed their feat.

Deep in the school, in its heart, under all of its best protection, there were four unconscious people in a long abandoned lab. Their conscience had been accidentally tied to the very magic of the school, their body preserved by very strange circumstances, and they had been distantly watching generation after generation of students for a thousand of years. One of them, a man, almost woke up fifty years ago, when Riddle had made the mistake of killing a muggleborn, but nothing else had happened in years and so he had fallen asleep again until his chamber was opened once more.

That was very dark magic in that diary, very dark magic indeed, and it was enough to make him almost wake up again.

His conscience was closer to the surface now, and the school, tied to him as well as to the others, was glad to obey his wishes.

The hallways didn't lead Tom Riddle to Hogwarts' most precious secret. They leaded Harry.

Everyone knows the walls move. Harry still didn't expect them to open an entirely new hallway in an otherwise familiar location near the Transfiguration's classroom. There was an old door at the end of it, old and blue, its doorknob in a familiar bronze. It was surprisingly not rusty. Maybe not so surprisingly, seeing as the magic was so thick there that even them could feel it.

"Must be locked", Hermione said. She didn't know yet, despite her run with the three-headed dog in her first year, that most really important secrets aren't under common locks.

"Doesn't cost to try", Ron shrugged. "What could be more dangerous than a basilisk?"

"In our case, any magical creatures that Harry can't talk to, which are a lot, really-"

"Oh, c'mon Mione, not the time to start giving us a lecture-"

"It could be really dangerous! If you'd only listen to me-"

"Uh, Hermione? Ron?", Harry said, and only then they noticed he had already opened the door. "I think you'll want to see this."

 

Helga Hufflepuff was never the feared one.

That's not to say she wasn't strong. She could be as powerful as Godric, as astute as Rowena, as cunning as Salazar. It wasn't lack of talent or magic that made so many people make the mistake of underestimating her.

Human beings, and especially wizards, have the unfortunate tendency to think kindness equals weakness and naivety. It often doesn't occur to them that it takes bravery to do what must be done, cleverness to do it well, and ambition to want to do more than the average. Helga Hufflepuff wasn't any less than the others.

She had been stuck in a half state of conscience for a thousand of years, watching students come and go through war and peace. Helga had seen kindess and its opposite. She had never been naive. She surely wasn't that now.

Helga had felt when Salazar started to wake up. So did the others. They had slept for so long, their minds tangled as one within themselves and one with the castle's magic, that there was an even stronger bond among them. Somewhere deep in the castle, the basilisk closed its eyes and Salazar opened his. 

"Oh", Helga said softly.

They were inside Rowena's lab. There was no dust at all on the many shelves or cauldrons, her delicate tools and instruments still in their respective places, nothing really changed — well, nothing inside that room, at least. That was good. Rowena could get angry dangerously fast when her tools weren't being taken care of.

Rowena. Helga quickly looked around and sighed in relief. They were all safe, all of them in their favorite seats — Rowena's weirdly uncomfortable chair, Godric's red and gold sort-of-throne, Salazar's green loveseat. Helga herself was still in her incredibly comfortable armchair. Sure, they all looked a little out of it, but who could blame any of them?

"I'll take it my experiment didn't go as planned", Rowena said. Helga had to repress an urge to fix her ruffled hair. It was usually so dark and glossy, tied down for her experiments, but this was the closest Rowena ever got to a bedhead. Ravenclaw tapped her fingers on the arm of her chain, thoughtful.

"Where are we?", Godric said startled, basically jumping from his seat in what wasn't exactly the smartest move after a thousand of years. He swayed on his feet and, not noticing any immediate danger, sat again. Godric still had a hand on the empty shealth of his sword. "It looks like we have guests, my friends."

Guests? Helga finally looked at the open door. There were, in fact, three children — probably around twelve, if she wasn't very mistaken — that looked familiar, even though Helga was very sure she had never seen them while awake. That wasn't surprising. She had seen many things while asleep. If she could just remember all of them...

One of the children was a ginger— oh, yes, there was a family or redheads, wasn't there? His eyes were wide in a frankly understandable reaction to the current situation. The girl by his side also had wide eyes, but they were full of the kind of hunger that Helga was more used to seeing in Rowena's eyes, and bushy, brown hair that looked stuck in a zipper, that was the word, right?, of a bag so full of books it looked like it was going to burst at the seams. At least she hoped it was books. And then...

"Oh", she said again. "Oh, dear."

The third kid had messier hair than Godric and greener eyes than Salazar. Her heart melted and then shattered when she noticed the small signs any responsible adult should be able to identify — the way his uniform seemed to swallow him whole despite being probably the smaller size, how she could see every bone in his hands, how he flinched under her concerned gaze. That boy had problems, and no one was trying to help him.

Rowena got angry dangerously fast when her tools were not being taken care of. Helga got dangerous slowly when one of her students was suffering.

"Who is taking care of you, dear?", she asked gently, and the boy frowned in confusion.

"Helga, really, is this the right time to-"

"Helga?", the girl with Rowena's eyes shrieked. "As in Helga Hufflepuff?"

She looked at the girl and smiled sweetly. That was a kid, one very enthusiastic, and she wasn't going to snap at her even if she was worried about another child. "That's my name, dear. I'm assuming you didn't know about this?"

Rowena was looking at the girl with something like interest in her eyes. As Helga suspected. The girl seemed exactly the kind of student Ravenclaw would usually take under her wing. Her boy, however, was half hiding behind the ginger. (She thought the redhead's name was Ron.)

"Knew about- what, that you've been here- how are you even alive?"

"That", Salazar said, and Helga sighed, "it's a very good question. How are we alive, Rowena?"

"Oh, don't look at me like that. I did warn you about all possible outcomes and this was one of them", she retorted. Ravenclaw had never liked it when her experiments didn't go the way she expected, and she liked even less when they questioned her about it. Helga thought it was a fair question though. It did affect all of them way more than even she had foreseen.

Maybe they shouldn't be so calm after such a traumatic experience. It was hard to be anything but, though. It hadn't been exactly a coma. They had been aware, learning, watching, and now the pain and grief of the loss of old, old friends had stayed behind. It would still take some time to get used to this time, probably.

"You said it was unlikely-", started Godric, always one for fights, taking Salazar's side as — well, definitely not always, but often enough.

"The Founders of Hogwarts. In a secret room no one of us had ever seen before. Alive. Harry, are you sure that basilisk didn't kill us and we're in some kind of bizarre afterlife?", the ginger boy was too pale for Helga's liking. On the bright side, she finally had a name for the other.

"I don't- I don't think so, no", Harry said slowly, as if he too wasn't quite sure. He looked wary. 

"The basilisk?", Salazar perked up and both Godric and Rowena groaned. "How is she? Is she healthy?"

"Is it a she?", the girl asked surprised. "How can you know? How do you determine if a basilisk is male or female? Do they even reproduce? I thought they were made. It says in-"

Definitely one of Rowena's, Helga thought amused. Godric snorted.

"I'll tell you all about it later, if you'd like", Ravenclaw said. "But I'm afraid it must wait for a while. You asked how are we alive, right? That was a mistake, I think"

"Not like that", Godric added quickly when the girl paled. "Frankly, Rowena... It was just a- failure in an experiment, you'd say. We were meant to sleep for just a day."

"We can explain at a more convenient time. Right now, we shall talk to the current Headmaster and warn him that we will stay in the castle."

"Are you going to-", Harry started to ask before he closed his mouth, looking uncomfortable.

Helga's already existent sense of dread just grew.

She slowly got up from her armchair, knowing better than Godric that her body needed time to adjust to being awake and moving and that sudden moviments would likely startle Harry. The softer Founder stopped in front of the three children. Her long, poofy skirt pooled around her.

"It's okay, dear", Helga told Harry gently. "Ask your question, yes?"

He looked surprise. Was that because she was Helga Hufflepuff, or did no one try to be adequately gentle with the kid? She refrained herself from frowning and waited patiently for him to talk.

"Are you- are you really going to stay?", Harry finally asked.

Helga smiled.


End file.
